Word.ws English Dictionary

puzzled

/ˈpʌ.zl̩d/

puzzled adjective: confused or perplexed. Also the simple past and past participle of puzzle.

Adjective

puzzled (comparative more puzzled, superlative most puzzled)

  1. Confused or perplexed.
    • They diſentangle from the puzzled ſkein / In vvhich obſcurity has vvrapp'd them up, / The threads of politic and ſhrevvd deſign / That ran through all his purpoſes, […]1785, William Cowper, “Book III. The Garden.”, in The Task, a Poem, […], London: […] J[oseph] Johnson; […], →OCLC, page 98
    • [W]hen the day of the departure came, between her two customs of laughing and crying, Miss Sedley was greatly puzzled how to act.1847 January – 1848 July, William Makepeace Thackeray, chapter XI, in Vanity Fair […], London: Bradbury and Evans […], published 1848, →OCLC
    Synonyms:
    stuck

Also used as

puzzled is also the simple past and past participle of puzzle.

Examples of puzzled in a sentence

  • Once or twice he scratched his head, and stared out of the window with a puzzled frown.1920, Herman Cyril McNeile, chapter 1, in Bulldog Drummond:
  • They could not, it was said, keep Scandinavian bogies and the Scriptures separate in their puzzled brains.1936, J. R. R. Tolkien, Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics, Norwood, Pa.: Norwood Editions, published 1976, page 17:

Synonyms of puzzled

Forms of puzzled

comparativemore puzzled
superlativemost puzzled

Words formed from puzzled

Phrases with puzzled

Questions about puzzled

What does puzzled mean?
Puzzled means confused or perplexed.
How do you use puzzled in a sentence?
Once or twice he scratched his head, and stared out of the window with a puzzled frown.
What part of speech is puzzled?
Puzzled is an adjective.
How do you pronounce puzzled?
Puzzled is pronounced /ˈpʌ.zl̩d/.

Words near puzzled in the dictionary

  1. puzzle-pegs
  2. puzzleation
  3. puzzleations
  4. puzzlebox
  5. puzzleboxes
  6. puzzled
  7. puzzled out
  8. puzzled over
  9. puzzled through
  10. puzzledly
  11. puzzledness

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: puzzled (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-puzzled.ogg.

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